Zoraptor

Cut out the stupid and use allied Chechens (Kadyrov sr) against enemy Chechens was about the sum total of the 2nd Chechen War. Nothing quite like an internecine struggle for unpleasantness though, and Kadyrov wasn't shy about taking revenge on his enemies. Can't argue with the effectiveness, there are a few rebels hanging around in Georgia but not much else, and virtually the entire Chechen rebel leadership is dead.

US strategy in Syria was pretty consistent at least from 2015 onwards. Prior to that it was messy to say the least, with Pentagon and CIA backed groups literally fighting each other at times, and a bunch of CIA backed groups joining ISIS. But from 2015 when the CIA was permanently sidelined apparent inconsistency was mostly because the publicly stated strategy and actual strategy were different. There's no doubt the US could have beaten ISIS far far quicker had they wanted to, but politically backing Iran backed shia militia and anarchist Kurds was too hard. The stated aim was to destroy ISIS, their actual aim was to contain it, and funnel it towards government held areas. With a funnel strategy either ISIS would end up in Damascus, making a proper intervention both inevitable and publicly acceptable or the government and ISIS would dissipate each others strength against each other, allowing US backed forces to pick up the pieces. That was predicated on Turkish sensibilities towards the PYD and assurances that the Turkish backed rebels would be an effective anti ISIS force- which they weren't- and Erdogan being Erdogan he managed to alienate the US pretty effectively so making the Kurds politically palatable. Since it was then a choice between the Kurds or Assad it was easy for the US to choose. There were plenty of inconsistencies in the Russian approach too. Both the US and Russia claimed to be going after ISIS financing hard, but neither struck at the their extraordinarily obvious main revenue source- oil- significantly, until, the Turks shot down the Russian Su24. Then the Russians obliterated ISIS' tanker fleet in roughly two days. Why? Despite the statements both sides knew that Erdogan's son was facilitating the oil trade with ISIS, was getting a lot of money from it, and didn't want to rock that boat. Once Russia wanted a way to retaliate at Erdogan though his son's side earner was fair game. It helps that the Russians treat the Syrian deployment as training too, they're not worried about dropping lots of ordnance and doing lots of flight hours because they'd just be dropping the bombs and doing the flight time on ranges inside Russia if they weren't there and it comes out of the existing training budget.

He's not wrong, it's just hilarious watching rich people get upset when the tables are turned on them. Especially when they've been getting massive welfare almost uninterrupted since 2008 in the form of quantitative easing, bailouts and interest free loans which has seen their net worth soar while everyone else's has at best stagnated. "Won't someone spare a thought for the unfortunate billionaires of the world?" is not exactly a rallying cry for the ages, and the thought most people would spare is not exactly a sympathetic one.

Certainly doesn't require it, but the best strategy for maximising returns is to (artificially) inflate the price, then short it at the start of the dump phase. A coordinated sequence of bad news is a good way to make sure that happens.

They were pumping Gamestop specifically to asterisk with Melvin Capital, who were dumb enough to expose the fact they'd shorted GME stock in public documents. The normal pump and dump strategy is for the Big Players with media contacts, AI trading and massive portfolios to target the small players by artificially inflating prices with orchestrated good news then crashing it with orchestrated bad news; this is the spiritual reverse of that. It doesn't even really rely on the normal good news cycle since there isn't any way to spin Gamestop positively; the stock appreciation is being driven by the stock appreciation, and that is the 'good news'. It's also only making news because it's a Big Player being targeted, not a bunch of individual investors as it is 99% of the time. ('Fun' fact for the day: half of Joe Biden's biggest campaign contributors are fund hedge managers, and 3 more worked in related fields.)

Yep. And Hillary herself was far more keen to support the whacky islamist militants in eastern Syria that were palatable to Turkey than the YPG/J up until she stepped down as SoS, with the support for the Kurds all coming under Kerry's aegis. Most of the those whacky islamists, of course, defected to ISIS in 2013-4 and ended up being fought by the Kurds and the US. Those that didn't defect developed a penchant for lobbing chlorine at Kurdish enclaves, after conventional attacks had failed. Somewhat suspect those little details will be omitted though.

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton to make TV series focused on Kurdish women militia. I had some difficulty deciding where to put this. World Politics? Funny Things thread? Anime thread? One thing is for sure, it will be a measured, respectful and balanced examination of the YPJ and not a cringey masturbatory embarrassment of neoliberal self justification that is unintentionally hilarious and somehow less nuanced than Call of Duty's take on the issue.

Truth certainly seems to be that the Euros are having a terrible time distributing the vaccine they already have properly, and are looking for someone else to blame for the poor roll out. So the alternative would be throwing all the toys out of the cot and threatening to put export controls on any AZ vaccine produced there while complaining about the evil UK 'hoarding' doses produced there. I wonder which one they will choose to go with, the option that apportions blame to them for poor distribution and production woes or the option that apportions blame to someone else; the suspense is killing... oh they've blamed the dastardly anglos. Quelle surprise. (not really sure how you get low yields of that vaccine without some sort of incompetence. The whole point of the more traditional type vaccines is that they're pretty simple to make in bulk and don't need exotic conditions)

Didn't the polls have Lula winning versus Bolsonaro, until he got barred?

The trickle down theory for healthcare works exactly as well as the trickle down theory for economics. The mRNA vaccines will never scale up to worldwide levels and are intrinsically too expensive for poorer countries- a 'normal' vaccine very basically requires a big fermenter like for brewing beer, mRNA ones require specialist equipment. 40USD for a vaccine course, with vaccines kept at -70C in, say, India? Even the cheaper/ less stringent Moderna version is still way too expensive. The only viable options for poorer countries are the more orthodox types- AZOxford/ Sputnik/ Sinovac. That's probably not the reason why South Africa etc are making complaints though. Under medical emergency provisions normal patent and licensing provisions can be set aside and medicines produced without explicit approval from the IP owners; they're legally establishing that there isn't enough and the situation won't change in a reasonable timeframe. Once that is done they can simply make vaccines themselves via compulsory licensing.

If we had a Trump Tower he'd probably end up here, like James Cameron, Gabe Newell, Peter Thiel and the rest of the billionaire boltholers. In more positive news, looks like START at least will get renewed, as both Biden and Putin agreed to it in their first presidential call and a renewal doesn't need congressional support. Interesting transcripts too, Russian one doesn't mention Solarwinds, Navalny, Ukraine etc while US one does; US one doesn't mention JCPOA, OpenSkies etc while the Russian one does. The translation from passive-aggressive suggests there's still a decent amount of things to talk past each other about.

OK so I rewatched Darmok. Pre-emptive pardon asked the quote formattings which will inevitably break at some point... It wasn't the first strategy, the first strategy was whatever passes for the standard diplomatic approach in Tamarian*, as they ran through a bunch of metaphors while everyone got progressively more frustrated- and which they mentioned had been tried and failed 7 times before. Then Dathon states 'Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra' to his 2ic after an argument, presumably similar to the one Riker and Picard would have if Picard suggested something similar. *--DATHON [on viewscreen]: Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya. Ubaya of crossed roads at Lungha. Lungha, her sky grey. Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai and Jiri would be analogous to Darmok and Jalad, but a metaphor for a more 'normal' diplomatic meeting. Presumption yes, but I'd say it's a fairly safe one. Definitely did, it's as explicitly confirmed as you could get with a metaphorical language and Picard asks Dathon the same question* after he's been injured. The story is that Darmok and Jalad did arrive separately, but that isn't really important; the important part of the metaphor is "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" "The beast at Tanagra" "Darmok and Jalad on the ocean" ie co-operation to defeat a common foe followed by them becoming if not friends at least continuing to co-operate to get off the island. *--PICARD: You hoped this would happen, didn't you? You knew there was a dangerous creature on this planet and you knew from the tale of Darmok that a danger shared might sometimes bring two people together. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. You and me, here, at El-Adrel. --DATHON: Kira at Bashi. Temba, his arms wide.

Air Cavalry is pretty relevant in most situations. Large scale paratrooping would only be relevant for certain situations, but then it was always only relevant for certain situations.

Now I'm going to have to watch the episode again. (I'm certain that the whole reason for kidnapping Picard was to try to mirror the 'Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra' situation/ metaphor of two 'enemies' uniting against a common foe and eventually succeeding per 'Darmok and Jalad on the Ocean' but I can't remember how much of that was stated and how much implied/ metaphored in the episode)

It's unlikely he could repeat such a thing, since he's stuck in a cell in Paremoremo (?) basically incommunicado for the rest of his life. The whole point of using it during the Mosque shooting was that once done the media would compulsively push the 'white power symbol' thing into the mainstream, no matter how objectively dumb it was.

Zoraptor, his ire irrationally raised. But seriously, Darmok benefits hugely from at least one rewatch, since you can tell what the aliens are saying. And kind of pertinent to other discussions, but Darmok has gained particular relevance now since it can be seen as an analogue to meme communication. If you said "Anakin, with the ground lower" "Drake, his approval gained" "Dexter, an unexpected maternal based accusation" etc just about everyone would know exactly what pictures were meant and what was meant to be communicated by them.

Somebody == Rupert Murdoch, which is the only reason why I'm not in complete support of Australia, just 99% in support. Wish our politicians had the balls to do the same here, but most we can expect is Jacinda looking very concerned, maybe. There's literally no evidence that 750 people were killed. It's been maybe 2 weeks since the initial reports too, so there's been plenty of time for any evidence to be released. There's lots of propaganda floating around about Ethiopia, due to the Grand Renaissance Dam. Trump even suggested that Egypt "had to do something" about it, with the example being literally blowing it up. The most likely people to be used to blow it up would be near local Ethiopian rebels, ie the Tigrayans, since anything else would be an overt act of war. It's not really any surprise that Trump's comments were on October 25, and the ceasefire in Tigray was broken by the- marxist, by the way, though you'd never know it from the reporting- TPLF attacking an army base scarcely a week later on November 4.

Brenton Tarrant was a member of 4/8chan, that's literally literally why he chose the OK sign to use. The whole point of him using it was to show how easy it was to take something with a perfectly innocent meaning and make it signum non gratum. Treating it as a white power sign is exactly what he wanted. The counterexample would be something like Pepe being a 'white power' symbol based on, well, Hillary Clinton's campaign not understanding the maymays and her media supporters wanting to back her even on something so patently stupid. Which ended up with some people thinking the Hong Kong protesters were white supremacists (!), since they used Pepe extensively.

I'll be right, again, though; it won't amount to anything so long as it's just Navalny. And really, you've posted 6 times on the subject, not 'a couple'.

They didn't actually enter its airspace, they entered its Air Defence Identification Zone. ADIZ are wholly self declared and have literally no legal standing; and in Taiwan's case actually extends over mainland China (!). 99% of the time when you see an article complaining about intrusions or entering airspace it's ADIZ related, and not an actual intrusion. 95% of the remaining 1% it's around St Pete's since there's a lot of traffic to/ from the Kaliningrad exclave and the territorial waters there are a mess. You do get a lot of articles about non intrusions though, because it makes for great click bait and too few people know the difference between ADIZ and territorial waters/ skies. (Not that Taiwan has nothing to fear from China, quite the reverse. But that article is basically propaganda level)

It shouldn't be a surprise, it happens with annual flu jabs sometimes and happened extensively when it came to the big PPE rush back in March. Bunch of countries had expired PPE, mislaid or other phantom PPE, not fit for purpose PPE, stockpiles that simply didn't meet what was claimed, and plain old distribution problems. And that's for stuff with years long best befores and no requirement for being kept at a specific temperature potentially including dry ice level freezing until use. It would be amazing if there weren't administrative problems.

The most prominent Russian nationalist wasn't even Russian. And Gromnir hasn't posted anything as offensively stupid as that claim that Russia would be bankrupt in 6 months which would provoke a reaction, yet. There isn't really anything to say anyway. They're small protests with some violence, but way smaller than in Belarus recently or in 2012 Russia. Sometimes such things get bigger, but it seems extremely unlikely since Navalny is only significantly popular outside Russia, and it would require the Liberals or Commies to mobilise protesters which they'd only do if they thought their guy would replace Putin rather than Navalny.

Ah, but that's what the 5g is for- it's no coincidence that we have 5g rollout and an 'epidemic' requiring everyone get a vaccine at the same time... All the longest lasting conspiracy theories have an aspect of the scientific about them as that's a great way to recruit more followers, and because even if you don't believe the conspiracy you cannot conclusively prove that, say, injecting RFIDs wouldn't work. Indeed, the 'beauty' of it is that you either have to lie about RFID injections being impossible or admit that they are; and either approach ends up reinforcing the conspiracy theorist's position.

Eh, it's based on the very real microchipping that is done to pets. The more fringe aspects like 'mind control' are obviously impossible, but a RFID microchip is not just possible but there would be a lot of people in power who would absolutely love to force everyone to have one, if they thought they could get away with it. That's also one of the reasons why there's a decent overlap between antivaxxers and cell phone conspiracies* because the easiest way to get the RFID signals would be... cell towers. Obviously there are other... problems with the whole idea, but fundamentally the idea of injecting a tracker/ microchip is far from impossible or even implausible. *well, the main one isn't a conspiracy though it does indicate why you don't really need to microchip people: the vast majority of people happily carry a tracker around with them wherever they go be cause they can call their friends and check facebook on it whenever they like.

Yes, it should definitely be 'could' above instead of 'would' as it requires a lot of things to fall into place properly, see below. The realistic estimate is 50% architectural improvement, HBM, tight binning and some node based improvement to get maybe as low as 350W. I don't think power draw will be close to the biggest problem faced though*. The doubling of efficiency above comes from recently AMD having significantly understated efficiency improvements. For 5700XT -> 6900XT the improvement was ~80% rather than the 50% claimed, once clockspeed and core counts are taken into account, and a bit more if you take the doubled VRAM into that account too; and from Vega to RDNA1 the gain was even higher. Add some node improvement from 7nm+/ 6nm and you can get to 100% gain and lower thermal density. There's still a lot of potential problems with that though; how VRAM will work, any interface chip taking up extra space and producing extra heat, the bus/ cache set up between the two cards, potentially even the physical size of the graphics card could be an issue too. *Fundamentally the thing about power draw is that it's relatively easy to lower by simply setting the clocks lower in BIOS.